Whether or not the only reason that people play game is to win raises many questions. Some people argue that the only purpose of playing game is to win. However, I believe that there are many other reasons to play games. People play games for socialization and releasing stress, or sometimes for education.
To begin with, people play games for socialization. In this aspect, winner and loser is not an important matter. As game is a good means to break the ice among people, game is played in various socializing situation. For example, when many companies in Korea have a membership training, they play games to know each other and to get familiar with new members. Rather than formally introducing themselves, which occurs rigid atmosphere, they play games that invented to introduce and remember names, so that they can have confortable atmosphere when they just start their training. Playing game is a good method to socialize people who met each other for the first time.
On top of that, games can be a good way to release stress regardless of the result of game. A lot of games that people should run and shout help people release stress. Since people in Korea donot have enough time to go out and exercise because of study and work, they are under a huge stress. They need outdoor activities to move their body and forget all the duties causing a lot of stress. For them, games such as frisbee or badminton while not counting scores, which are hard to say who the winner is, is greatly helpful to have fun and relax, free from all works they have to do.
Moreover, there are people who play games to learn something. To be particular, games for learning english words like "Hang man" or "Banana grams" are widely played in Korea. As people in Korea are eager to learn english, those games are widely done and games for similar purpose are more and more coming out. These games help people achieve knowledge while having fun. There is no competition among people in these games. It is hard to tell who the the winner is, but people playing those games help each other to complete english words and improve their english.
In brief, for those three reasons above; socialization, relaxing, and education, people play games not only to win or compete others. |